Dow Sustainability/Jeff Wooster/Citrus Heights CA

This week we hit a record radio audience and part of that draw was a great show we did with Jeff Wooster, Head of Sustainability for Dow (Plastics and Packaging), and he talked in detail about the pioneering program Dow put together with the City of Citrus Heights CA (Northern CA) and other waste/energy projects in which many of the plastics we cannot recycle now, in almost every city and town, got reclaimed into synthetic fuel.

You can hear the show by clicking on the player, top of our blog, which brings you to our 24/7 RN network.  As an added bonus, you will be listening to other segments and other shows that delve deeply into our world that is so positively transforming before our eyes.  Enjoy.  To see more on the story and their videos, use this link:  http://www.dow.com/packaging/sustainability/energy-recovery.htm

Energy Recovery

A way to convert plastic waste into energy

Every day, Americans generate over four pounds of waste per person1. Despite the expansion of recycling programs during the past few decades, more than half of all U.S. trash (135 million tons2) still ends up in landfills. Through a collaborative effort to explore an alternative for plastic waste, Dow co-sponsored the Energy Bag Pilot Program. The three-month pilot program in Citrus Heights, California proved that non-recycled plastic items - like juice pouches, candy wrappers and plastic dinnerware - could be collected and converted into an energy resource. The Energy Bag Pilot Program also helped to identify a way to keep more material out of the landfill.

Co-sponsored by Dow, the Flexible Packaging Association, and Republic Services, along with The City of Citrus Heights, California, the Energy Bag pilot program was the first-of-its-kind pilot in the United States intended to divert non-recycled plastics from landfills and to optimize their resource efficiency. The citizens of Citrus Heights were asked to collect previously non-recycled plastic items in bright purple bags – their Energy Bags – so the items could be converted into energy.

The purple Energy Bags were collected during the community’s regular recycling pick-up, sorted at the recycling facility and sent to a plastics-to-energy plant. Using their patented thermal pyrolysis technology, which is complementary to current mechanical recycling programs, Agilyx converted the previously non-recycled plastics into high-value synthetic crude oil.